Regional contractor Bluestone fell victim this week to a practical joke by Dead Ringers on BBC Radio 4.
The firm received a call from someone on the show impersonating Chris Eubank, the former boxer, asking for work to be undertaken on the rooftop of his home in Brighton.

This comic insisted that the builders wear Spiderman outfits created by Eubank's son to carry out the work.

It is understood that the contractor believed at first that they had been asked to do this because it would be filmed as the first episode of a television show about the Eubanks, At Home With The Eubanks, a fly-on-the-wall documentary, and went along with it. Later the firm discovered it was a hoax staged by the radio show.

A Bluestone statement said that the employee who took the call had been "ready to call in the men in white coats" until she found out it was a nationally broadcast hoax.